The process of creativity trumps any Ai production for rich emotional experiences. The Art is the hard fought or beautifully woed the final outcome of that process. Ai privileges speed over creativity. Creativity is a process that requires time, introspection, wider reading, seeing and hearing. Ai ‘art’ is merely Illth and offers no Wellth at all.

One of the things I really don’t understand about GenAi (Generative Artificial Intelligence) in the Arts and Crafts is why the people who evangelise it privilege speed over learning and emotion. 

Art is all about emotion. That’s why it exists. The thrill of the mammoth hunt, the evocation of joy, remembrance of fear, the celebration of love, the grief of loss. Only Art is in any position to translate these events of the mind, heart and soul from the individual to the group no matter what language the speak. Why on earth would you want to diminish this transmission, this translation and sharing by engulfing it in “speed to product”.

The image on this page shows the start of one of my radio play submissions. Alongside the text is a character mask sketch. The two things: text page and sketch page were made by me, by hand over a week or so. A lot of the time was spent looking at the paper and rethinking the characters story, mask, quotes. 

The Ruskin quote is about his idea of “Illth vs. Wellth”. I discovered it after watching an old BBC documentary about Bernard Levin ; a man noted by The Guardian in its obituary of him as, “A passionate and eclectic journalist with a legendary capacity for work, whose career made him a host of friends – and enemies”. For Levin, well, this is what he said: 

“He (Ruskin) coined the word ‘Illf’, a punning opposite to Wealth. And what he meant by it was not bad taste, nor conspicuous consumption, nor plenty in the midst of poverty. It was the profusion of possessions that existed only to be possessions.”

I think about Generative Ai in the same way: the creation of artless, emotionless, mindless, heartless and soulless items that have no other intrinsic or extrinsic value than to be sold on as artless, emotionless, mindless, heartless and soulless items. Nothing is translated, shared, thought about with Generative Ai. 

Scruffy bastard

The image below shows some of my process writing a radio play (sure it’s scruffy, messy, handmade, pencil, pen, paper, enormous notepad, smudges, scrawls, all process). I made the sketch of a character mask (Dr Ostriberger, my wife, also a doctor, calls it) as I thought about the next character’s line or position or even about a new character. 

The process of making these things took more than a week, less than a month, most of which was spent thinking, glorious, slow thinking, and reading and looking. Some of the time was spent dreaming. Some of the time was spent forgetting. 

One day, I may even work up the Dr Ostriberger mask into a painting, and even then only as a frankly quite discomfiting detail. 

Here’s our Bernard talking about Illth. I’d recommend watching the entire documentary.